Oh! Mama, Mama look there!
Your children are playing in that street again
Don't you know what happened down there?
A youth of fourteen got shot down there
The Kokane guns of Jamdown Town
The killing clowns, the blood money men
Are shooting those Washington bullets again

As every cell in Chile will tell
The cries of the tortured men
Remember Allende, and the days before,
Before the army came
Please remember Victor Jara,
In the Santiago Stadium,
Es verdad - those Washington Bullets again

And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961,
Havana fought the playboy in the Cuban sun,
For Castro is a color,
Is a redder than red,
Those Washington bullets want Castro dead
For Castro is the color...
...That will earn you a spray of lead

For the very first time ever,
When they had a revolution in Nicaragua,
There was no interference from America
Human rights in America

Well the people fought the leader,
And up he flew...
With no Washington bullets what else could he do?

'N' if you can find a Afghan rebel
That the Moscow bullets missed
Ask him what he thinks of voting Communist...
...Ask the Dalai Lama in the hills of Tibet,
How many monks did the Chinese get?
In a war-torn swamp stop any mercenary,
'N' check the British bullets in his armory
Que?
Sandinista!


Lyrics submitted by aebassist

Washington Bullets Lyrics as written by Mick Jones Joe Strummer

Lyrics © BMG Rights Management, Universal Music Publishing Group

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Washington Bullets song meanings
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  • +3
    General Comment

    Basically it's a critique of American foreign policy, particularly the habit of the US government in supporting anybody who was anti-communist, including fascist regimes such as that of Pinochet in Chile. Of course, US support for the Mojahadeen in Afghanistan is part of the reason the world is in the mess it's in right now. The lyrics are remarkably prescient.

    However, the genius of the song is that it doesn't just attack America, it attacks the USSR for invading Afghanistan and China for invading Tibet. Strummer was against both sides in the cold war, against all human rights abuses, whoever committed them.

    The reference to a 'playboy' in the Cuba verse is of course to JFK, who ordered the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

    ntwjoneson January 22, 2006   Link

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